


Turns of Fortune

by Island_of_Reil



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fugitives, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Mentor/Protégé, Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-11
Updated: 2014-05-11
Packaged: 2018-01-24 08:52:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1598948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_of_Reil/pseuds/Island_of_Reil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“That won’t be the last time you’ll hear yourself spoken about like that. Or your friends. It won’t even be the worst time.”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turns of Fortune

**Author's Note:**

> Jossed by Chapter 58, but such is life. 
> 
> Edited to add: Changed to "Gen or Pre-Slash," since it can really be read either way.

“Captain Levi! _Jump!_ ”

Mikasa shouldn’t have been out in the street, she knew, not with Gear strapped to her hips and blades close by her hands. She’d had to get out of the stable after Jean, Connie, and Sasha wouldn’t stop muttering about how _they_ weren’t going to murder people and _fuck_ Levi and _what the hell_ was wrong with Mikasa and Armin anyway. She felt a little guilty for leaving Armin to deal with them, but if anyone could manage it, Armin could. And it was probably a better solution than her knocking Jean’s teeth down his throat.

The Reiss faction had Eren. That terrified her, even if Eren was armed and able to shift. Maybe Jean didn’t care what happened to Eren, but _she_ did. And Historia? They were all having the vapors over Levi picking her up by her collar and throwing her down again ( _she wasn’t even **hurt,** for God’s sake_ ), but they’d be happy to leave her with her father, who’d ordered her mother killed in front of her and only let Historia live so long as she was willing to deny who she was? Mikasa didn’t even _like_ Historia all that much, especially not after that bullshit with Ymir. But she’d had two good fathers, and Historia had had none. She thought she’d enjoy disemboweling Rod Reiss with a rusty Gear blade just for what he’d done to his daughter.

If he hurt Eren, even a little, that’d be too fast and gentle a death for him.

She’d turned her cloak inside out to hide the Wings of Liberty and the green outer layer, but a sharp eye could still discern the scabbards, hilts, and gas canister beneath. So she’d remained in the shadows as much as possible with her hood up and her head down. But when she heard the gunshots, she’d flung her head up — and when she recognized the slight figure moving backwards on the rooftop, and she realized he couldn’t fly away without making a greater target of himself, she’d thrown any caution for herself to the wind.

Levi had reacted as automatically as Mikasa had. No sooner had his head jerked over his shoulder and his eyes widened in recognition than he was leaping off the roof. She caught him against her right side, under her arm, grunting in surprise as his weight bore her down — he wasn’t _heavy_ , she’d borne soldiers twice his size on her back before, but he was heavier than he looked. As his hands scrabbled against her shoulders for purchase she sped away into the shadows, bullets raining into the space where they’d been half a second before.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Levi hissed. “You were supposed to stay in the stable with the others!”

“I needed a walk, sir,” she said tersely, deciding that adding _before I kicked Jean’s ass from here to Wall Sina_ wouldn’t make her answer any more palatable to him.

“No, you didn’t. What you _needed_ to do was follow orders, you stupid fucking brat. You have absolutely no right to put yourself at risk at your own discretion!”

The thought of throwing him off her back crossed her mind. “Yeah, well… I did. _Sir._ ” Her voice was sour, and she didn’t give a shit.

He expelled a sharp breath. “If you were expecting my gratitude… it’s not that you don’t have it. It’s that, ultimately, I’m expendable. You took a risk that wasn’t, strictly speaking, necessary. But what’s done is done. Where are you going?”

_You’re not expendable to me. I need you to make sure we get Eren back._

“I’m just trying to lose him, sir,” she said as she rounded another corner. 

“See that alley to your left? Duck down it.”

He directed her through at least two dozen twists and turns through darkened side streets, anonymous alleys, and burnt ruins. As she doubled back on the route over and over she began to lose all sense of direction. Finally he had her stop in one alley and set him down. The air about them reeked of alcohol, cooking grease, and spoiled food; she tried not to think about the chitters and squeals coming up from the ground at their feet. Levi tossed his grappling hooks up the pitted stone wall and began to ascend, and Mikasa followed.

The rooftop they gained sported a thicket of mismatched chimneys. Crouching, Levi tucked himself behind a long rectangular one that was easily the width of three normal chimneys; its smoke smelled of applewood and roasting meat. Mikasa, ignoring the sudden watering of her mouth, slipped behind it as well. They leaned their backs against the hot stone prominence as they sat on the flat, level rooftop. She could hear a distant buzz of voices that seemed to be coming less from the street than from within the building beneath them, a buzz laced with the clink and clash of glass and dinner plates.

“Where are we, sir?” she asked quietly.

“On the roof of the Rose and Unicorn,” Levi said. “A very old tavern, in the oldest neighborhood of Trost. And a very busy one. The patrons are a mix of locals and, as the name implies, MPs and Garrison troops. We can wait here for a few hours. The … man who was shooting at us isn’t likely to come looking for us in the midst of all the other people who are looking for us.”

“‘Us’? I mean, he was shooting at you, but not really at me, sir.”

“He shot and killed Nifa, Keiji, and Friedrich,” Levi said.

His tone was much as it always was: calm, neutral, matter-of-fact. Reading him was a very different proposition from reading Eren, which she’d learned to do years ago. But he was enough like her herself that she could perceive the strain under the flat, emotionless veneer. She doubted it was as bad as when he’d lost his old squad. Bad enough, though. She wished she herself had no idea what it was like to see one’s own comrades fall from rooftops to their deaths. Or be plucked off them.

She wondered if Hange knew yet.

“Was it an MP shooting at you, sir?” she asked, both out of curiosity and to change the subject.

After a few seconds of silence, he said, “Yes.” The lie of omission was as clear in his voice as the strain had been.

She let the matter drop. He probably figured she was better off not knowing whatever he wasn’t saying. She’d already pissed him off tonight anyway by saving his ass, and she saw no need to press her luck.

A loud voice from below rose into the silence between them. Even before she could understand the words, she registered the drunken warble and recognized the melody. It was a song of the Garrison Legion, one she’d heard many times back in Shiganshina. When Hannes and his men had realized that children were listening, they’d sung only the tamer verses. They hadn’t always realized that children were listening. 

The drunk who’d just staggered out of the Rose and Unicorn was half-singing, half-yelling the verse celebrating the epic devotion of a Military Policeman to his favorite horse. Mikasa snickered quietly, and to her right she heard an even softer snort of amusement.

“Shut up and stop drawing attention to us,” came another voice. This man seemed slightly less drunk than the singer. “Bodies are falling off the rooftops tonight, haven’t you heard? Who the fuck knows how many Survey Corps butchers are up there.”

The back of Mikasa’s head scraped against the stones of the chimney as she raised it. Something cold and sharp ran through her belly.

“So insulting ‘em out loud is your way of not drawing attention to us?” the first man slurred.

“Nah, it’s because you’re thicker than two planks when you’re drunk, Ruprecht, and you need everything spelled out for you.”

The man named Ruprecht laughed. “So you think they did in the Reeves fellow?”

“I _know_ they did in the Reeves fellow. Were you there when that girl carved his bodyguards up, two of ‘em at one go? Supposedly that was to get him to move his wagon and let people escape. Who really knows, though.”

“Yeah, I saw that whole thing too. What the fuck was wrong with her eyes, anyway?”

“She’s an Oriental, you moron. That’s what their eyes look like.”

“An Oriental? I thought they’d all been killed off,” Ruprecht said. 

“Guess they missed a few,” his drinking companion replied. Their voices were growing less audible as they continued down the street. “And it came back to bite ‘em. Maybe they’ll finish the job right this time.”

Mikasa couldn’t have moved at that moment if Levi had threatened her with his blades. Her nape and spine felt cold even against the heated chimney stones, and her stomach roiled with something acrid and poisonous. She realized that in the last six years, she’d felt fear for Eren and Armin, and for the others of the 104th, countless times. She’d never, not once, felt fear for herself. 

_Oh, hello again, you son of a bitch. I didn’t miss you at all._

“Mikasa,” Levi said. His voice was as flat and neutral as before. As always.

“Sir,” she replied, her own voice tight and embarrassingly high.

He let a beat go by, then said, “That won’t be the last time you’ll hear yourself spoken about like that. Or your friends. It won’t even be the worst time.”

She remembered what Eren had told her, about what Petra had told him. Who Levi had been before the Survey Corps was not a topic of discussion in the Corps, not because it was forbidden but because it was meaningless. He was one of their own, and they were his men. But she’d heard it discussed in the markets and on the corners after the 57th Expedition. How much of it was true, she had no idea, but all of it was ugly. Trade in illicit goods; burglary; armed robbery; extortion and enforcement; assassination. 

And other things. Such as speculation about how else a very small man with a very pretty face might have earned his living, especially when he was young. She remembered a cabin in the woods, not the one she’d lived in. She tasted bile in her mouth, and her palms itched for the hilts of her blades.

And now he was a fugitive from justice, or what was being called justice. She wondered how much he’d overheard about himself in the last day alone.

“Does it get easier to hear over time, sir?” she asked, her voice back in its normal register.

Levi sighed. “To be honest? No. You get used to it, somewhat. You get used to not reacting to it. You get a better understanding of why people say it. But … being called things like ‘butcher’ or ‘traitor’ or ‘monster’ will never get easier.”

And, once more, she heard what went unspoken: _especially when those things are true._

She suddenly felt tired, far more tired than after any day she’d spent flying through the air and carving out the napes of titans or titan dummies. She raised her hand to stifle a yawn against the back of it.

“Get some sleep, Mikasa.” Levi said. He unbuttoned his cloak and pulled it off his shoulders, then handed it to her. “There’s a pillow for you. Right next to the chimney, I don't need a cloak, and you won’t need a blanket.”

“I’ll be fine, sir,” she said automatically, the next yawn stretching out her last word and giving the lie to her assertion.

His voice sharpened. “Do as I say, damn you. We’re not in much danger right now, but the more rested we are when we leave, the better our chances. I’ll wake you up in a few hours, and you can keep watch while I sleep.”

“Yes, sir.”

She took off her Gear and laid it between herself and Levi, then took off her own cloak and folded it into a narrow pallet before easing herself onto it. Then she folded Levi’s cloak and stuffed it under her head. It smelled of expensive soap, fresh sweat, gunpowder, and blood. She was a little embarrassed to find the first two comforting, surprised to find the third so. The fourth barely registered.

The next day, she supposed it could have been possible that she felt the palm of his hand, briefly, against the crown of her head. But she wrote it off as the blurring of reality with whatever came bubbling up from the bottom of her mind when she drifted into sleep.


End file.
